Porn, gambling, and malware: Bitcoin as the ‘Net’s Wild West

A year after the bubble popped, we check on the cryptocurrency's progress.

On June 8, 2011, the same day Ars Technica ran its first story about Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer digital currency's value jumped to an all-time high of $32. Bitcoins had been worth less than $1 just two months earlier, and that day proved to be the peak of the bubble. The value of a Bitcoin fell below $20 within a week, and by November it had fallen to $2.

But since it hit bottom late last year, the cryptocurrency has defied skeptics (including me) who predicted it would prove to be a passing fad. The currency regained some of its lost value, and the price has become much more stable in recent months. In the last three months, the value of a Bitcoin fluctuated in a narrow band from $4.50 to $5.50. As this is being written, the currency has just hit a three-month high of $5.60.

The one-year anniversary of the popping of the Bitcoin bubble is a good occasion to take stock of the currency's progress and explore where it might go in the coming year. This year's stable Bitcoin prices haven't made headlines the way last year's volatility did, but innovation and experimentation have continued below the radar.

Playing defense

Work on the flagship Bitcoin client has continued under the leadership of developer Gavin Andresen. He told us that shoring up the Bitcoin network's defenses has been a high priority for the development team. "People have found various ways to flood the network with bad transactions or data to knock nodes off the network," he said. "The last year has been spent trying to be more proactive about that type of thing so that it's much harder to attack the Bitcoin network."

Andresen said that most of the attacks focused on exploiting unanticipated edge cases. No changes have been required to the core Bitcoin protocol. That, he said, is "a good indication that the core concept is holding up. Nobody's found any theoretical reasons why it can't scale up and why it can't continue to process transactions and be secure."

Andresen also said his job has become more complex as the Bitcoin network has grown more diverse. "More and more people are running alternative implementations of Bitcoin that don't require you to be connected as a full-fledged host," he said. Also, "several people are working on complete re-implementations of the Bitcoin system."

Despite the new challenges this creates, Andresen sees it as "really healthy from a network stability and security standpoint. If we have diverse implementation, then a bug in one client doesn't mean the entire network blows up."

Mobile Bitcoin apps for Android are now available. Unfortunately, he said, "iOS has been a struggle just because Apple for whatever reason has decided they don't like Bitcoin handling on their platform."

A major focus in the coming months will be enabling multi-device authentication. Bitcoin-stealing malware is a common problem. Future Bitcoin clients will support multisignature transactions, in which a user's private key is split up among multiple devices. With this feature enabled, compromising any single device won't allow an attacker to spend the Bitcoins in a user's wallet.

Girls Gone Bitcoin

A wide variety of new Bitcoin services have popped up over the last year. Andresen pointed to BitInstant, a startup firm that offers fast, hassle-free transfers of funds between dollars and Bitcoins. It raised seed funding in December.

Other uses for Bitcoins have been less wholesome. A year ago, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) denounced Bitcoin for its use by Silk Road, a website that offers anonymous purchase of illicit drugs.

More recently, a major source of Bitcoin transactions has been Satoshi Dice, a virtual Bitcoin casino. Players place bets by transmitting Bitcoins to fixed Bitcoin addresses corresponding to various "games." For example, if you send Bitcoins to the address 1dice2zdoxQHpGRNaAWiqbK82FQhr4fb5, they promise you a 0.0977 percent chance that you'll get 1,003 times as many Bitcoins back.

Then there's "Girls Gone Bitcoin." In this reddit subforum (reddit shares a parent company with Ars Technica), women post naked pictures of themselves along with Bitcoin addresses, in hopes of receiving tips. (We're not going to link to it, but we trust interested readers know how to use Google.) Andresen calls this "the high-tech equivalent of putting a dollar in a G-string."

These developments don't surprise Jerry Brito, a researcher at the libertarian Mercatus Center at George Mason University. For most uses, he said, dollars (or other countries' official currencies) are simply more convenient, so it's hard for Bitcoin to gain traction. But he argued that Bitcoin's relative anonymity and the lack of intermediaries gives it a crucial advantage for "illicit stuff: drugs, gambling, pornography, getting money out of countries where there are restrictions on moving funds. That's where it'll establish itself first."

"Regulators should be hands-off"

Of course, there are significant unanswered questions about the legality of Bitcoin itself. One Bitcoin exchange closed its doors in February, citing regulatory problems as a major factor in its failure. An FBI report has raised concerns about the potential applications of Bitcoin for money laundering.

But while Bitcoin may be subject to legal restrictions in some jurisdictions, Andresen and Brito agree that there's unlikely to be anything the world's governments could do to shut down the Bitcoin system altogether.

"It's not clear how you'd write that regulation without banning a lot of other things," Andresen said. For example, he said, regulations that tried to ban "transmitting numbers that represent some value over the Internet" could hit startups that offer gift card trading or mobile check cashing. "It's a real challenge for regulators who are working with laws that were written for atoms, not bits," he said.

Brito agreed. "It would be as difficult to take down the Bitcoin network as it would be to take down the BitTorrent network as a protocol," Brito argued.

And he thinks that's a good thing. "Regulators should be hands-off," Brito told us. "Bitcoin has potential to be a very useful tool. Let's not kill it while it's still in the cradle."

Disclosures: The author owns some Bitcoins. Also, he is contributing a chapter to a forthcoming book on copyright edited by Jerry Brito.

105 Reader Comments

And, he thinks that's a good thing. "Regulators should be hands off," Brito told us. "Bitcoin has potential to be a very useful tool. Let's not kill it while it's still in the cradle."

And like any unregulated tool, it will primarily be useful to those who wish to be unregulated. IE: criminals, gamblers, and people who don't want transactions to be subject to any kind of oversight or control.

And, he thinks that's a good thing. "Regulators should be hands off," Brito told us. "Bitcoin has potential to be a very useful tool. Let's not kill it while it's still in the cradle."

And like any unregulated tool, it will primarily be useful to those who wish to be unregulated. IE: criminals, gamblers, and people who don't want transactions to be subject to any kind of oversight or control.

And why do you think a government has any business in a private transaction?

And, he thinks that's a good thing. "Regulators should be hands off," Brito told us. "Bitcoin has potential to be a very useful tool. Let's not kill it while it's still in the cradle."

And like any unregulated tool, it will primarily be useful to those who wish to be unregulated. IE: criminals, gamblers, and people who don't want transactions to be subject to any kind of oversight or control.

And why do you think a government has any business in a private transaction?

That argument has already been hashed out ad nauseum.

Let me ask you this: do you feel it's perfectly OK if child porn traffickers, drug dealers, or murderers start to your Bitcoins in an attempt to avoid their transactions being traced? Because that's part of the flipside of your post.

And, he thinks that's a good thing. "Regulators should be hands off," Brito told us. "Bitcoin has potential to be a very useful tool. Let's not kill it while it's still in the cradle."

And like any unregulated tool, it will primarily be useful to those who wish to be unregulated. IE: criminals, gamblers, and people who don't want transactions to be subject to any kind of oversight or control.

And why do you think a government has any business in a private transaction?

That argument has already been hashed out ad nauseum.

Let me ask you this: do you feel it's perfectly OK if child porn traffickers, drug dealers, or murderers start to your Bitcoins in an attempt to avoid their transactions being traced? Because that's part of the flipside of your post.

Not saying you're wrong. Just asking.

You could say precisely the same about cash, but I don't see anyone seriously using that as justification for its demise (though what people say behind closed doors may be another matter).

Let me ask you this: do you feel it's perfectly OK if child porn traffickers, drug dealers, or murderers start to your Bitcoins in an attempt to avoid their transactions being traced? Because that's part of the flipside of your post.

Not saying you're wrong. Just asking.

Liberals: when all else fails, stick "think of the children" into the argument.

My two problems with BTC (and why I gave up mining when it was at around $4-5) was that the cost of procuring them began to supersede the value of the currency, which isn't a huge deal, and that there weren't enough stores that accepted BTC to provide value outside of mt.gox.

And, he thinks that's a good thing. "Regulators should be hands off," Brito told us. "Bitcoin has potential to be a very useful tool. Let's not kill it while it's still in the cradle."

And like any unregulated tool, it will primarily be useful to those who wish to be unregulated. IE: criminals, gamblers, and people who don't want transactions to be subject to any kind of oversight or control.

And why do you think a government has any business in a private transaction?

That argument has already been hashed out ad nauseum.

Let me ask you this: do you feel it's perfectly OK if child porn traffickers, drug dealers, or murderers start to your Bitcoins in an attempt to avoid their transactions being traced? Because that's part of the flipside of your post.

Not saying you're wrong. Just asking.

I've seen murder for Bitcoins on the deep web, but I'm pretty it's all a scam. As for drug dealing, I'm all for the legalization of drug use (including hard drugs). The "authorities" are not always morally right.

But, seriously, people do have a right to privacy. If people want to pay for certain purchases that they do not want traced back to them, it's their right. Of course, I do believe that most people who want the greatest amount of privacy are those who want to subvert the law in some way.

I mostly mine for Bitcoins and trade them back in for dollars via Mt. Gox.

Let me ask you this: do you feel it's perfectly OK if child porn traffickers, drug dealers, or murderers start to your Bitcoins in an attempt to avoid their transactions being traced? Because that's part of the flipside of your post.

Not saying you're wrong. Just asking.

Liberals: when all else fails, stick "think of the children" into the argument.

Plenty of conservatives use that same reasoning. It's used by both sides and is dumb in nigh every scenario.

Let me ask you this: do you feel it's perfectly OK if child porn traffickers, drug dealers, or murderers start to your Bitcoins in an attempt to avoid their transactions being traced? Because that's part of the flipside of your post.

Not saying you're wrong. Just asking.

Liberals: when all else fails, stick "think of the children" into the argument.

And, he thinks that's a good thing. "Regulators should be hands off," Brito told us. "Bitcoin has potential to be a very useful tool. Let's not kill it while it's still in the cradle."

And like any unregulated tool, it will primarily be useful to those who wish to be unregulated. IE: criminals, gamblers, and people who don't want transactions to be subject to any kind of oversight or control.

And why do you think a government has any business in a private transaction?

And, he thinks that's a good thing. "Regulators should be hands off," Brito told us. "Bitcoin has potential to be a very useful tool. Let's not kill it while it's still in the cradle."

And like any unregulated tool, it will primarily be useful to those who wish to be unregulated. IE: criminals, gamblers, and people who don't want transactions to be subject to any kind of oversight or control.

And why do you think a government has any business in a private transaction?

uumm...if it's illegal

govt has no idea that a transaction has taken place if cash changes hands, so how is this any different? just like EVERYTHING ELSE, law enforcement has to keep up with the times. set up sting operations just like they do now.

I mostly mine for Bitcoins and trade them back in for dollars via Mt. Gox.

This has really confused me. I thought Bitcoins are an electronic form of currency. The amusing image the quote above gives me is the internet equivalent of Dig Dug... Are people hiding hashes for Bitcoins around the internet that you are data mining to find? That seems silly because thousands of people would find them when the various search engines indexed the pages...

So what is the "mining" that is going on?

Edit: OK, this page tries to describe at least part of the process. Is mining doing distributing computing (like folding@home) but users are partially compensated for participating by being given some Bitcoins in exchange for the work units they do? I assume the value of Bitcoins given back to users for mining would be less than the cost of power consumed doing whatever number-crunching is involved with mining?

I'm glad an alternative to credit cards are being used on the internet. Though they have rarely wielded their power, credit card company had the power of life or death on the success of a website based on whether or not they would accept payments to/from the website. This should lead to further democratization of the internet and ensure that no government or private company can control what goes on it.

Hopefully bit coins will spread from just porn and gambling to other web stores like amazon. Something similar is used in some African countries, I believe they use mobile money to buy things since their central banks are weak.

Mining is process of validating transactions between users, performing some special algorithm described in Bitcoin.pdf above. Technical background is quite difficult, but basically Bitcoin network need as much computation power as possible for doing this task, to protect network against many types of attack.

Miner is specialized software searching for unconfirmed transactions on network and include them to the algorithm which it performs. Once the miner finish his task by finding specially formated data, also called as "proof of work", and push this data (called "block") back into the Bitcoin network, the transaction included inside this block become confirmed ("1 confirmation" in Bitcoin client).

As incentive to attach own computer into the grid and start mininig software on it, miner can take 50 BTC for every valid block he found for the network. It is done by special transaction included into the block itself. This is the reason why there is such hype about mining around, because those 50 BTC was pretty easy to earn and when Bitcoin reached the parity, it become very profitable.

But Bitcoin network has many self-regulating algorithms included. Namely it is "difficulty", which regulate number of blocks mined every day. Bitcoin network is trying to find 144 blocks (=7200 BTC in miner rewards) ever day, without care how many people is mining. So as the network grows, it become harder and harder to find valid block for every participant. I'm talking it because I feel people are too much oriented about mining, but this is just technical solution how to kick up the economy and spread Bitcoins between people. Mining is NOT a target, so if you don't have strong mining rig, nevermind! As common Bitcoin user or newcomer, you don't need to understand whole stuff around mining and you don't need to care about mining at all; you can sell goods, provide services or whatever and earn much more Bitcoins than by setting up Yet Another Mining Rig (tm).

And, he thinks that's a good thing. "Regulators should be hands off," Brito told us. "Bitcoin has potential to be a very useful tool. Let's not kill it while it's still in the cradle."

And like any unregulated tool, it will primarily be useful to those who wish to be unregulated. IE: criminals, gamblers, and people who don't want transactions to be subject to any kind of oversight or control.

And why do you think a government has any business in a private transaction?

That argument has already been hashed out ad nauseum.

Let me ask you this: do you feel it's perfectly OK if child porn traffickers, drug dealers, or murderers start to your Bitcoins in an attempt to avoid their transactions being traced? Because that's part of the flipside of your post.

Not saying you're wrong. Just asking.

There are plenty of ways to do illegal things. We could caught alot of pedos, murders, and drug dealers if the government had unfettered access to everyones, emails, texts, phone calls etc.

Excellent use of a straw man argument though. If you think bitcoin shouldn't be regulated you MUST condone kiddie porn.

And, he thinks that's a good thing. "Regulators should be hands off," Brito told us. "Bitcoin has potential to be a very useful tool. Let's not kill it while it's still in the cradle."

And like any unregulated tool, it will primarily be useful to those who wish to be unregulated. IE: criminals, gamblers, and people who don't want transactions to be subject to any kind of oversight or control.

And why do you think a government has any business in a private transaction?

That argument has already been hashed out ad nauseum.

Let me ask you this: do you feel it's perfectly OK if child porn traffickers, drug dealers, or murderers start to your Bitcoins in an attempt to avoid their transactions being traced? Because that's part of the flipside of your post.

Not saying you're wrong. Just asking.

There are plenty of ways to do illegal things. We could caught alot of pedos, murders, and drug dealers if the government had unfettered access to everyones, emails, texts, phone calls etc.

Excellent use of a straw man argument though. If you think bitcoin shouldn't be regulated you MUST condone kiddie porn.

Exactly how those who think that I should have to check in with the government every time I make a transaction argue. They have no real concrete reason for government involvement in my private life, it just makes them "feel safe".

If I want to mow my elderly neighbor's lawn in exchange for some home baked cookies, should I phone the whitehouse and let them know in case someone else wants to buy some child porn with snickerdoodles?

It's always easy to use those pedocards, but let's make things more difficult. How about Chinese behind great financial transaction firewall, who have just found bitcoin as a way to move currency from the country? Should they have this option, even though it requires highly illegal methods in Chinese perspective?

Let me ask you this: do you feel it's perfectly OK if child porn traffickers, drug dealers, or murderers start to your Bitcoins in an attempt to avoid their transactions being traced? Because that's part of the flipside of your post.

Not saying you're wrong. Just asking.

I have an answer in the form of another question for you:

Is it perfectly okay with you that people run other people over in cars? Because if you let people drive, that's going to happen you know.

Is it perfectly okay to sell knives, knowing that some people might use them to stab other people? Because if you allow the sale of knives, that's going to happen you know.

Is it perfectly okay to allow doctors to operate, knowing that some of them will screw up and kill the patient instead of saving them? Because if you allow people to become doctors, that's going to happen you know.

Are you starting to see how asinine that argument is or do I have to slap some expired equine meat to get it through to you and everyone else? A tool is a tool is a tool is a tool.

How it is used is up to the individual - it is neither good nor bad, only the user is.

Of course regulators should keep their hands off. This is an invention of people worldwide, a new technology that could change the way we conduct business. Some people consider it the best invention after the Internet and to be honest, its the only real cyber cash in the world. Its the only way to send value from point A to point B in another part of the world that cannot be intercepted or stopped, or costs a fortune, which means you can send micro payments.

Why would a small group of people, like a government which does not represent the whole world kill a technology?

Im actually impressed with the IQ of some people that claim this would be used only for illegal things pointing this as their main opinion on why it should be controlled or banned. I ask this people, do you actually know that 90% of the Internet is porn? So should we take the Internet down as well then?

Of course it will flourish with illegal things first, and people that don´t want third party putting their hands in their pockets but just think for 1 second, we are here reading on Ars about news and technology and we are using the Internet which is used for allot of bad things either, but the very small % of good things surpass all this evil things that are on the Internet. 90% porn, illegal content, I can go on and on what are the major uses of the Internet. People try to gain advantage on everything and Bitcoin or the technology is not to blame.

And please get real, anything illegal you claim can be done with Bitcoins can be done with cash today just as well and even better, a million U$ can be carried in a single suitcase today, just because bitcoins are transported via the Internet does not make them more illegal than cash today which is even more anonymous than bitcoins. Bitcoins is exactly like cash, its digital cash, anything you can do with real cash today is true for bitcoins in the same way of using it for good or bad things. The only difference is that one is physical paper and the other one are bits and bytes send via a network. And this is actually a benefit.

1. Selling something to someone.2. Griping/bitching/moaning/groaning/complaining/raging/conspiracy, and forcing upon others ones view of their life or things they do.3. Porn and other vices or self serving indulgences.

I don't fault bitcoin or others like it for wanting to capitalize on these things because, using a phrase often credited to P. T. Barnum. "There is a sucker born every minute"

I mostly mine for Bitcoins and trade them back in for dollars via Mt. Gox.

This has really confused me. I thought Bitcoins are an electronic form of currency. The amusing image the quote above gives me is the internet equivalent of Dig Dug... Are people hiding hashes for Bitcoins around the internet that you are data mining to find? That seems silly because thousands of people would find them when the various search engines indexed the pages...

So what is the "mining" that is going on?

Edit: OK, this page tries to describe at least part of the process. Is mining doing distributing computing (like folding@home) but users are partially compensated for participating by being given some Bitcoins in exchange for the work units they do? I assume the value of Bitcoins given back to users for mining would be less than the cost of power consumed doing whatever number-crunching is involved with mining?

Any clarification would be appreciated.

Maybe Ars should do an article about this?

I'm not an expert on this, but mining is the process of receiving Bitcoins by helping to verify transactions on the network by contributing your local computing power to it. It's distributed computing, yes.

Don't get the point of girls gone bitcoin... what's the advantage over, say paypal? Is it mainly for kids who don't have access to traditional payment options, but have managed to get their hands on BTC? Or are the girls nerdy enough that they like coins for their own sake?

And please get real, anything illegal you claim can be done with Bitcoins can be done with cash today just as well and even better, a million U$ can be carried in a single suitcase today, just because bitcoins are transported via the Internet does not make them more illegal than cash today which is even more anonymous than bitcoins. Bitcoins is exactly like cash, its digital cash, anything you can do with real cash today is true for bitcoins in the same way of using it for good or bad things. The only difference is that one is physical paper and the other one are bits and bytes send via a network. And this is actually a benefit.

Well, I'm not placing judgement one way or another on the merits of Bitcoin, because I'm not sure how I feel about it just yet. But while what you're saying about the similarity between Bitcoin and cash is completely true, I'd like to bring up a parallel to police tracking of individuals using agents on the ground versus GPS tracking. Both are ways of tracking the movements of a person, but GPS tracker technology is much easier to do, which makes it objectionable to many people. Similarly, both cash and Bitcoin transactions cannot be traced by the government or anyone else, but eliminating the need to transfer physical currency makes Bitcoin transactions much easier to use.

Of course, that doesn't make either inherently evil; cash is used for legal transactions all the time, and BItcoin can be too. But does the vastly improved ease of using electronic untraceable currency bring up new problems that physical currency doesn't have? I think the jury may still be out on this one.

And please get real, anything illegal you claim can be done with Bitcoins can be done with cash today just as well and even better, a million U$ can be carried in a single suitcase today, just because bitcoins are transported via the Internet does not make them more illegal than cash today which is even more anonymous than bitcoins. Bitcoins is exactly like cash, its digital cash, anything you can do with real cash today is true for bitcoins in the same way of using it for good or bad things. The only difference is that one is physical paper and the other one are bits and bytes send via a network. And this is actually a benefit.

Well, I'm not placing judgement one way or another on the merits of Bitcoin, because I'm not sure how I feel about it just yet. But while what you're saying about the similarity between Bitcoin and cash is completely true, I'd like to bring up a parallel to police tracking of individuals using agents on the ground versus GPS tracking. Both are ways of tracking the movements of a person, but GPS tracker technology is much easier to do, which makes it objectionable to many people. Similarly, both cash and Bitcoin transactions cannot be traced by the government or anyone else, but eliminating the need to transfer physical currency makes Bitcoin transactions much easier to use.

Of course, that doesn't make either inherently evil; cash has always been used for legal transactions, and BItcoin can be too. But does the vastly improved ease of using electronic untraceable currency bring up new problems that physical currency doesn't have? I think the jury may still be out on this one.

Yet one infringes on the rights to individuals' privacy, and another maintains it, hence the entire argument.

Don't get the point of girls gone bitcoin... what's the advantage over, say paypal? Is it mainly for kids who don't have access to traditional payment options, but have managed to get their hands on BTC? Or are the girls nerdy enough that they like coins for their own sake?

I would imagine that having "girls gone paypal" show up on any transactions that people might see (by the female or the viewer) is less incriminating than "random payment x to random person y" with no means to determine what x and y are.

Well, I'm not placing judgement one way or another on the merits of Bitcoin, because I'm not sure how I feel about it just yet. But while what you're saying about the similarity between Bitcoin and cash is completely true, I'd like to bring up a parallel to police tracking of individuals using agents on the ground versus GPS tracking. Both are ways of tracking the movements of a person, but GPS tracker technology is much easier to do, which makes it objectionable to many people. Similarly, both cash and Bitcoin transactions cannot be traced by the government or anyone else, but eliminating the need to transfer physical currency makes Bitcoin transactions much easier to use.

Of course, that doesn't make either inherently evil; cash has always been used for legal transactions, and BItcoin can be too. But does the vastly improved ease of using electronic untraceable currency bring up new problems that physical currency doesn't have? I think the jury may still be out on this one.

Yet one infringes on the rights to individuals' privacy, and another maintains it, hence the entire argument.

Well, the use of GPS technology by the government to track individuals without warrants infringes on the right to privacy. The use of Bitcoin by private to conduct legal transactions maintains privacy. There is nothing inherent in the technology itself that makes it automatically encroach on or enhance privacy. So this is really a matter of how it ends up being used. If Bitcoin becomes primarily used by unsavory people to make illegal transactions easier to conduct and thereby ends up increasing the number of those transactions, then I think many would agree that that is a problem. How we address such a problem is yet another matter.

And, he thinks that's a good thing. "Regulators should be hands off," Brito told us. "Bitcoin has potential to be a very useful tool. Let's not kill it while it's still in the cradle."

And like any unregulated tool, it will primarily be useful to those who wish to be unregulated. IE: criminals, gamblers, and people who don't want transactions to be subject to any kind of oversight or control.

And why do you think a government has any business in a private transaction?

Simple - to maintain control over the distribution of the desirable goods and to collect taxes.

Only a few dollars are effectively anonymous in cash transactions. Try moving some tens of thousands of dollars in cash and see how that anonymity works for for you. Money laundering isn't trivial and the government is very keen to follow it. When the government decides to look at your income and expenses you think spending suitcases of cash is going to somehow not show up as a gap?

Why should BC's be any different, in their desire to track it? Do we have the right to financial privacy from the government? I'd say the principle of taxation says no, we have no financial privacy from .gov.

Don't get the point of girls gone bitcoin... what's the advantage over, say paypal? Is it mainly for kids who don't have access to traditional payment options, but have managed to get their hands on BTC? Or are the girls nerdy enough that they like coins for their own sake?

Like any merchant, they are just trying to accept a wide variety of payment methods that their customers prefers. It can all be converted back into whatever they value in the end.

I suppose it's also a marketing advantage. Look at all the free attention they are getting right now!

With VISA, Mastercard, and PayPal blocking donations to Wikileaks, I think it is a good thing there is a way to transfer money that is not subject to the heavy hand of Uncle Sam (or Miss Shanghai). There are other ways to go after paedophiles that doesn't have overreaching effects on the privacy of citizens.

Timothy B. Lee / Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times.